What a pleasure to welcome the International Legal Finance Association to Chancery Lane for its European conference last week. Obiter was struck by the attendees’ dress code: even in a heatwave, dark suits and ties are de rigueur on the funding scene. Pundits who detect correlations between fashion and overall economic sentiment will draw their own conclusions.
But striking his own sartorial note in a cream jacket and a pink tie was keynote speaker Sir Jonathan Jones. The former civil service legal chief, who resigned in principle over the government’s threat to depart from the rule of law, was on fine form delivering some ‘unsolicited advice’ to the ‘next government’.
High on his agenda was ‘corrosive’ language. ‘Enemies of the people’ had a mention of course (perhaps giving the impression that the phrase came from a government minister, not a newspaper sub-editor). Jones also urged politicians to refrain from belittling lawyers as ‘woke’ or ‘activists’ just for doing their job.
But stamping out this tendency could be an uphill struggle. For instance, take a Twitter attack this week by an MP on a lawyer selected to fight the Altrincham seat at the next election. Apparently the individual’s sins included acting for ‘news organisations accused of phone hacking’. The accuser was Andrew Western, the Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston.
No doubt Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, at whom Jones’s advice was just possibly directed, will have a word.
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